Author: Laurence D. Finston.
The following copyright notice applies to the text and source code of this web site, and any graphics that may appear on it. The software described in this text has its own copyright notice and license, which can be found in the distribution itself.
Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbH
Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of this license is included in the file COPYING.TXT
Last updated: February 12, 2007
2007.02.12.
The author
will no longer be maintaining this website, i.e.,
the IWF Metadata Harvester website.
Please see the
LDF Metadata Exchange Utilities website instead.
The IWF Metadata Harvester was developed by the
author while
participating in a programm sponsored by the German government at the
IWF Wissen und Media gGmbH,
Göttingen, Germany.
Since this program ended on January 31, 2007, he is developing a new
package based on the IWF Metadata Harvester
under the name
LDF Metadata Exchange Utilities.
The author would like to express his appreciation to the IWF Wissen und Media gGmbH for permitting him to publish his work there under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Free Documentation License.
2007.02.12.
Please see
An Important Announcement.
The IWF Metadata Harvester is a package for retrieving metadata from servers, writing it to databases, and representing it in human-readable form. It currently retrieves data from servers using two different sets of standards: The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and Z39.50.
OAI servers provide records in the form of XML files in a format based on the Dublin Core standard. Z39.50 servers, on the other hand, can provide records in a variety of formats, the most common of which is USMARC. The IWF Metadata Harvester can currently only process records from z39.50 servers in the Pica format, which is widespread in the Netherlands and Germany. In the future, I hope to extend it to process records in USMARC and other formats as well.
The IWF Metadata Harvester consists of 3 programs written in C++ and three databases:
| ATest: | C++ program for retrieving data from OAI servers (see ATest) |
| dc_test: | Database for storing the data retrieved by ATest (see dc_test) |
| ZTest: | C++ program for retrieving data in Pica format from Z39.50 servers (see ZTest) |
| PICA_DB: | Database for storing the data retrieved by ZTest (see PICA_DB) |
| Scantest: | C++ program implementing an interpreter for controlling the other C++ programs and accessing the databases. (see Scantest) |
| LO_DB: | A database with a reduced set of tables and fields for use in the “Lectures Online” Project of the IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbH (see LO_DB) |
The programs ATest and ZTest were developed using Microsoft Visual C++ in Microsoft Visual Studio under Microsoft Windows and the databases dc_test, PICA_DB and LO_DB were developed using Microsort SQL Servers. The program Scantest was also originally developed using MS Visual C++, but it is currently being developed using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) under Windows. Unlike ATest and ZTest, Scantest uses only Standard C++ and the C++ Standard Template Library.
2007.02.12.
Please see
An Important Announcement.
2007.01.24.
All variables, functions, and parser rules in the Scantest package are now
documented its Texinfo manual. However, at present, there are few
explanations. I will try to add more as soon as possible.
The Scantest Manual in HTML format
The source code for the IWF Metadata Harvester is available from CVS repository for this project at the Savannah developers' website. The main web page for the IWF Metadata Harvester at Savannah is here.
Snapshots of the individual sub-packages are available in the form of compressed archive files (gzipped tar files):| ATest: | atestsnp.tar.gz |
| ZTest: | ztestsnp.tar.gz |
| Scantest: | sctstsnp.tar.gz |
There two user manuals for the IWF Metadata Harvester. The first documents the programs ATest and ZTest and the databases dc_test and PICA_DB. The second documents the program Scantest.
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Fingerprint: 0007 566D B0E0 96AE 3F4A EBE5 6213 D0F0 7376 08BA
Laurence Finston
Kreuzbergring 41
D-37075 Göttingen
Germany
email: lfinsto1-*-AT-*-gwdg.de
s246794-*-AT-*-stud.uni-goettingen.de
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